The wife of democracy advocate Lee Ming-che (李明哲) on Thursday said she was yet to be told why her husband was transferred back to a prison in China’s Hunan Province after being moved to Hebei last month.
Lee Ching-yu (李凈瑜) said that the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Wednesday told her that her husband had been returned to Chishan Prison in Hunan, although no explanation was given.
Lee Ming-che has been detained in China since March last year and was sentenced to five years in prison after being convicted of “subversion of state power” in November last year.
He was at Chishan Prison initially, but on Oct. 19, a Taiwanese business association in Hunan said it was notified by the Chinese government that he had been transferred to Yancheng Prison in Hebei, which was founded in 2002 and is one of two prisons that are run directly by the Chinese government.
The Chinese authorities did not provide any further explanation, the association said.
MAC Deputy Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said that the council on Wednesday was informed by the Straits Exchange Foundation and the business association of Lee Ming-che’s second prison transfer.
Chiu said it had asked authorities in Beijing to explain why Lee Ming-che had been moved twice in such a short period of time, while expressing the government’s displeasure over his treatment.
He also urged Beijing to protect Lee Ming-che’s basic human rights and called on authorities there to allow family members to visit him in prison as soon as possible.
Honor guards are to stop performing changing of the guard ceremonies around a statue of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) to avoid “worshiping authoritarianism,” the Ministry of Culture said yesterday. The fate of the bronze statue has long been the subject of fierce and polarizing debate in Taiwan, which has transformed from an autocracy under Chiang into one of Asia’s most vibrant democracies. The changing of the guard each hour at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei is a major tourist attraction, but starting from 9am on Monday, the ceremony is to be moved outdoors to Democracy Boulevard, outside the eponymous blue-and-white memorial
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) supports peaceful unification with China, and President William Lai (賴清德) is “a bit naive” for being a “practical worker for Taiwanese independence,” former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said in an interview published yesterday. Asked about whether the KMT is on the same page as the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on the issue of Taiwanese independence or unification with China, Ma told the Malaysian Chinese-language newspaper Sin Chew Daily that they are not. While the KMT supports peaceful unification and is against unification by force, the DPP opposes unification as such and
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